Loneliness

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.

The best of friends must part.

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

(Opening Page)

When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He lay on his hard, armour-like back, and if he lifted his head just a little, he could see his rounded brown belly, divided into stiff, curved segments, on top of which the bedcovers precariously rested, ready at any moment to slide completely to the floor. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison with the rest of his body, waved helplessly before his eyes.

"What has happened to me?" he thought.

It was no dream. His room, an ordinary human bedroom, though somewhat smaller than usual, lay quietly enclosed within its four familiar walls. Above the table, where various samples of cloth lay scattered about — for Samsa was a travelling salesman — hung a picture he had recently cut from an illustrated magazine and set in a handsome gilt frame. It depicted a lady wearing a fur hat and a fur stole, sitting erect and extending toward the viewer an enormous fur muff into which her entire forearm disappeared.

Gregor's gaze then turned toward the window, and the gloomy, overcast sky — one could almost hear the raindrops striking against the windowpane — filled him with a heavy melancholy.

"Why don't I sleep a little longer and forget all this foolishness?" he thought.

But that was impossible, for he was accustomed to sleeping on his right side, and in his present condition he could not turn himself over. However hard he tried to roll onto his right, he always slipped back onto his back again. He tried at least a hundred times, closing his eyes so as not to witness the frantic movements of his legs, and gave up only when he began to feel a dull, unfamiliar pain in his side — a sensation he had never experienced before.

"My God," he thought, "what an exhausting profession I have chosen!"